Gravity

An Illusion Review by Joan Ellis

Gravity is a spectacle more to be admired than enjoyed. Writers have been
justly lyrical in their descriptions of Alfonso Cuaron’s creation of
microgravity. The director and his team spent four years struggling and
innovating in a weightless world while artists animated the entire film once and
then again after actors were dropped into the picture. How do all kinds of
objects – wrenches, bolts, helmets – move in a weightless environment? A simple
task like wrenching a bolt on a broken shaft is tedious and demanding. What are
the demands of space on people and things?
Creating
those demands on earth for filming purposes was an exacting challenge. Sandra
Bullock, who plays Dr. Ryan Stone, spent exhausting hours in a “light box” that
simulated weightlessness. She applied the skills she had acquired as an athlete
and dancer to the slow motions that are the currency of movement in space. Her
consistency and grace are admirable.
So where does
this leave the audience? Fascinated, certainly, by the visual splendor of
watching earth below and the chaos of space at hand. Space, we learn, is full of
the debris created by earthlings’ years of exploration. Fragments and wreckage
roar in permanent orbit around the earth in serious threat to earthly explorers.
Space trash is everlasting.
Ryan (Sandra
Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) have been dropped into this dazzling
emptiness by an accident on their routine space mission. The suspense builds for
the two – and for us – as we watch them float helplessly while trying to figure
out how they might survive. Bullock deserves a salute for mastering both
weightlessness and the labored breathing that, along with man-made melodramatic
music, is the only sound in the silence of Cuaron’s space.
There is a
bit of gentle flirting while Matt tries to steady Ryan’s nerves and a bit of
audience smirking when, back on board, Ryan tries to control the ship by reading
the instruction manual. Though Bullock coughs, breathes, and moves with
appealing grace, the slim story that surrounds her is entirely secondary to the
computerized visuals. The story itself is implausible, impossible, and fairly
unappealing. The liberties taken by the Cuarons – father and son – violate the
possible repeatedly in ways that border on being silly.
We need that
link to the possible in order to enjoy the movie. Yes, we think, they could be
cut loose. While we watch our suddenly irrelevant heroes floating out there, we
have plenty of time to wonder what it would feel like to be alone, untethered
from the safety of the mother ship in a void without limits, boundaries, or help
of any kind. There is no 911 helpline in space, no family, no friend. Perhaps
that is Alfonso Cuaron’s gift to the audience. He has captured the essence of
absolute solitude. He has pulled us into the extraordinary vastness of space and
given us plenty of time to realize how terrifying it would be to be there alone.